Poem: Function as a Metaphor

Workshop 11: Practicing Figurative Language

1. Complete "An Exercise Using Figurative Language" below.

An Exercise In Using Figurative Language - Poem 

• A. Create effective similes striking and apt comparisons by filling in the blanks in the following sentences. Your solution might be a single word or a short phrase, or it might be a lengthier, more complex description:

• 1. In his rage my father would bang on the wall like a ——.


• 2. Among her new in-laws the young wife was as nervous as ——.


• 3.1 paced the room as restless as a——.


• 4. Like a——, his smile suddenly collapsed.


• 5. It was the old sycamore in the front yard, swaying like a ——.

• B. Now create evocative images strong descriptive language to complete these sentences:

• 1. I loved the —— of the wash on the line in the summer morning.


• 2. I was afraid of his ——, his drunken, ungainly walk.


• 3. I will not forget the —— of your lips, your skin’s-, or the —— of your eyes.


• 4. She wished to draw me deeper into the-----of her life.

• C. In three or four sentences that sparkle with linguistic invention, describe:


• 1. a rundown house


• 2. an old table, desk, bicycle, car or truck


• 3. a particular potted plant


• 4. someone working in a kitchen or garden


• 5. a small incident seen in the street or in a store

Your task is below 

Make your descriptions come alive using precise, charged language. The goal, of course, is to describe each item accurately, vividly and engagingly.

2. Write a poem using the prompt for Poem 12 below

• Poem 12: An Object Poem Using Metaphors 


• If you have written the poem inspired by Al Zolynas’s “Considering the Accordion,” then you have already experimented with writing that uses metaphors and similes to describe an object imaginatively. But now that we have investigated figurative language more fully, it might be worthwhile to write another poem of that nature. Take an object that you have nearby—perhaps a ring, or piece of pottery or paperclip or lipstick—and place it in front of you. Spend a few minutes looking at it quietly and calmly. Notice things about it that you never noticed before. Allow yourself to feel it, smell it, observe it from various angles. Write four metaphors turning it into four different things: “The paperclip is a silver whirlpool....” Next, four similes: “The lipstick is like a fleshy purple bullet....”


• Now write a poem about the object employing some of those figures of speech. Let the poem go where it wants to, its direction determined more by the inventive play of language than by your conscious efforts.

3. Write another poem using the prompt for Poem 16 below

• Poem 16: An Autobiographical Metaphor 


• Can you find a concrete experience in your past that can function as a metaphor for an event that is more complex and recent in your life? Jack Gilbert has found a simple metaphor—an experience of shifting a heavy package from one position to another—for the complex predicament of bearing a heavy grief. Can the description of burying a dead bird when you were twelve be used to express the burying of a relationship, or trying to bury a painful memory? Is there an experience you can describe that will stand for some larger, more abstract situation, one that would be difficult to articulate without the analogy that you are creating between the two events? Recalling how someone stole a childhood toy might be used to explore the betrayal of a relationship that you might not otherwise have been able to speak about. Make sure the two stories, the one told and the one implied, are considerably different either in kind or in importance—yet somehow analogous. Otherwise, the controlling metaphor will have little punch. You may let the reader understand what the real subject is by a well-chosen title and at least one line in the poem, as Linda Pastan does. On the other hand, the significance of your story might be revealed to the reader in an entirely different way. That is a problem that is unlikely to be solved except in the course of writing the poem itself.

4. Part Two: Provide feedback on each of the poems by Using the new vocabulary you have learned from this poems.